While women (and men) in the United States are familiar with the fact that March is Women's History Month, less well-known is March 8 -- International Women's Day.

Next Tuesday will be the 100th observance of International Women's Day, a day which both celebrates women and promotes the need for greater gender equity and other issues facing women.

An annual event which originated in Europe, the idea of an International Women's Day was proposed during the second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen in 1910 and was first celebrated in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

Thanks to Women's History Month and International Women's Day, women's achievements and groundbreaking firsts are spotlighted by hundreds of websites and organizations. Here's a sample of what's out there:

50 Fascinating Facts for Women's History Month. Which US state was the first to give women the right to vote, and what nation was the first? Which country in the modern era was the first to elect a woman as its leader? What was the first Winter Olympic sport that women were allowed to compete in? Who was the woman credited with writing the first novel? A unique assortment of facts about women is available at the MastersDegree.net blog.

US Census Bureau Facts for Women's History Month. We all know women outnumber men, but what are the population totals for both genders? And at what age do women outnumber men 2 to 1? What's the median annual earnings of women who work full-time year round? How many female police officers are there across the US? These are some of the surprisingly entertaining facts courtesy of the US Census Bureau.

Firsts in American Women's History. When did the first women arrive in North America? (Hint: they walked over the Bering land bridge.) Who was the first American female writer to be published? What city and state opened the first public high school for girls? Which college was the first to admit females? (In addition to studying, the female students had to do laundry and cook for the male students.) Take a look at firsts for women in the US as compiled by Fact Monster.

Rooted in the Labor Movement. "International Women's Day and Women's History Month have their roots in the labor movement dating back to March 8, 1857 when women textile workers in New York  went on strike to protest against low wages and poor working conditions." This often-overlooked fact come from the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers International Union) Women's History Month website, which has a variety of pages dedicated to working women.

Herstory of Domestic Violence. In keeping with the advocacy aspects of International Women's Day, it's important to remember that the history of women includes the stories of battered women. The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse details the history of domestic violence starting in 753 B.C. (when wife beating was accepted and condoned) to 1999, using a timeline  put together by SafeNETWORK, a project of the California Department of Health Services.

Whenever a major story breaks that involves rape, the inevitable question is, "Why don't more women report rape and sexual assault?" One reason may be the prevalence of rape myths.

We know rape is an underreported crime. According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) 60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, and "factoring in unreported rapes, only about 6% of rapists ever serve a day in jail."

No matter how blameless a woman is, if she reports a rape or sexual assault she's stigmatized in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Though no one will ever say it to her face, some may question her actions, what she was wearing, where she was and whether or not she was consuming alcohol in an attempt to justify the most common of rape myths, "Well, she was asking for it."

These rape myths are not tied to any single culture or society; neither are they less common in countries where women have voting rights and social freedoms. Such myths exist everywhere and they are pervasive, damaging, rarely discussed but always at the back of our minds when we hear a woman's been raped or sexually assaulted. In many ways, what we see around us conditions us to believe these myths subconsciously.

Rape myths surfaced in the recent sexual assault of CBS correspondent Laura Logan. Writing for the Women's Media Center, Sheela Raja, a clinical psychologist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder says:

I've been horrified by some of the comments I've read--declarations about Lara Logan's looks, her previous sexual history, her choice of profession.  The irrelevant information seems to have no bounds....

While the circumstances surrounding the attack on Lara Logan are unique, the rape myths lurking all over the internet are familiar to anyone who has worked on sexual assault issues. It's time to acknowledge and challenge these false beliefs so that we can begin to better support victims of sexual violence.

Rape myths turn up frequently in pop culture and are the basis of many songs, movies, television and books. In Australia, the recent release of the song Just the Way You Are (Drunk at the Bar) by singer-songwriter Brian McFadden has split listeners into two camps. The lyrics essentially sanction a man having his way with a woman who's too inebriated to know what's going on:

I like you just the way you are, drunk and dancing at the bar, I can't wait to take you home so I can do some damage
I like you just the way you are, drunk and dancing at the bar, I can't wait to take you home so I can take advantage

While local radio personalities have called it "a fun sort of song," at the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) website women's issues expert Melinda Tankard Reist is disgusted not only by the song but also by the attitude of the label that released it.  She notes that Universal Music regards it as an "infectious" tune that will "rattle around in your head for hours":

Doing some damage, taking advantage of a woman under the influence of alcohol... is this the soundtrack we want going round and round in the heads of males?

Just one more message reinforcing the rape myths circulating in our culture: that inebriated girls are asking for it, and that you're not really to blame.  One more message encouraging boys to help themselves. I love you just the way you are, drunk, because it's easier to get what I want that way.

A recent UK study found that 48 per cent of males aged 18-25 did not consider rape to have taken place if the woman was too drunk to know what was happening. There's a kind of party atmosphere around these criminal assaults, with many men boasting about their conquests. An online genre known as 'Passed Out P*ssy' encourages men to share photos online of women and girls they have taken advantage of while drunk. 'She's drunk? Don't call a taxi and make sure she gets home safely! Call your friends, have some fun and share the pictures!' men are exhorted.

Love you just the way you are (drunk at the bar) helps legitimise this behaviour.

One might argue that McFadden, a judge on Australia's Got Talent and a father of daughters, doesn't really believe in this sort of thing but wrote the song realizing it would be controversial, widely sought out and discussed, and become a hit. After all, he's simply reflecting what's already out there in pop culture...and most of us can separate the fact from the fiction of rape myths, right?

Not so if you consider another controversial story involving rape myths, this one from Canada, where a Manitoba judge refused to sentence a convicted rapist to jail time. Although Queen's Bench Justice Robert Dewar rejected defendant Kenneth Rhodes' argument that sex was consensual, the judge said that the victim and her girlfriend were dressed suggestively, acted invitingly, and "made their intentions publicly known that they wanted to party."

Dewar justified the 2-year conditional sentence -- which includes at-home curfew and inclusion on the national sex offender registry  -- by stating,  "There is a different quality to this case than many sexual assaults," and added, "Not all guilty people are morally culpable to the same level."

Fancy words which foster the rape myth, "she was asking for it." If a man is less "morally culpable" because, as the judge noted, the victim was wearing a tube top with no bra, high heels and plenty of makeup, what does that say about the rights of women? We can say we don't believe rape myths, but if a judge's thinking is obviously influenced by them, what can we do to counter their impact on women's lives?

Related article: What are Rape Myths?

On this first day of Women's History Month 2011, the Obama administration has done something that will warrant at least a footnote in women's studies textbooks.

In a conference call for reporters this morning, Valerie Jarrett, Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls announced the release of the report Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being, a snapshot of how women are faring in today's society as compared to previous generations. Relying on federal statistical data on work, family, education, health, earnings, and crime, the report does not break new ground; rather, it compiles a variety of findings into one single document that offers a comprehensive look at the gains women have made and the challenges they still face.

Not since 1961 when President John F. Kennedy established the President's Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, has an administration focused its energies so specifically on the role of women in society with the intent to gather empirical data in order to reexamine how existing governmental policies impact women's lives.

As Becky Blank, Acting Deputy Secretary at the Department of Commerce said during the conference call, the report goes into the specifics of  "how much those traditional lives of women have changed...over the past 30-40 years" and why that change has occurred.

A good deal of the information is not surprising as it confirms what women have known for years: between work done in the labor market and at home, women spend more hours of the day "working" (whether it's paid or unpaid labor) than men do; women volunteer more than men do; women live longer than men do; and women are paid less than men are paid. Yet the report is significant in that it pieces together information from diverse sources to form a complete picture of women's lives.

According to General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor at the Office of Management and Budget Preeta Bansal, the Obama administration intends to use the data to determine needs and evaluate how different approaches are working. Such evidence-based policy data is key in facilitating agency decision-making and priority-setting, especially during the budget battles that lie ahead.

Will this bring us closer to passing the kind of family-friendly legislation that can benefit us all, such as paid maternity leave? One can only hope that the time and energy that went into compiling the data wasn't simply a form of window-dressing, offered up as little more than a one-month truce in the battle of the sexes just to make Women's History Month a 31-day feel-good fest.

As indicated by the language in the Foreword of the report, we're not there yet:

When President Obama signed the Executive Order creating the Council on Women and Girls, he noted that the issues facing women today "are not just women's issues." When women make less than men for the same work, it impacts families who then find themselves with less income and often increased challenges in making ends meet. When a job does not offer family leave, it impacts both parents and often the entire family. When there's no affordable child care, it hurts children who wind up in second-rate care, or spending afternoons alone in front of the television set....

By presenting a quantitative snapshot of the well-being of American women based on Federal data, the report greatly enhances our understanding both of how far American women have come and the areas where there is still work to be done.

Related articles:

• The Report Women in America- Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being
• President Obama's White House Council on Women and Girls
• The Shriver Report - A Woman's Nation Still Has Far to Go

Last night, despite a universally-acknowledged 'worst ever' Oscars show, some memorable moments occurred courtesy of Mom.

Mothers were prominently featured throughout the 2011 Academy Awards. In the Oscars pre-show on ABC, Good Morning America host Robin Roberts introduced the "mominees," the mothers of Oscar nominees in a variety of categories including acting, cinematography and directing. In pre-taped interviews, each proud mama offers her thoughts on her offspring's achievements and her reaction to the Oscar nomination. The women also posted comments on Twitter.  The Canadian Press quoted Charlie Haykel, co-producer of the Oscar pre-show, on the decision to spotlight mominees:

It's motherly insight into what their child was like growing up and where they ended up and their reaction to where they are today....We're trying to make the whole Oscars more relatable...Everybody's got a mom and they always embarrass us.

One mom in particular received her due when Tom Hooper, director of The King's Speech, stepped up to accept his Best Director Award. Thanking his mother in his speech, he told the story of how she'd been invited to a staged reading of a new play and called him up afterwards, saying that this could be his next film. "The moral of this story, " he told the audience, "is listen to your mother."

It was impressive to see the number of stars who walked the red carpet with their moms, including Justin Timberlake. And the shoutouts to moms and grandmas incorporated into the Academy Awards show script and delivered by co-hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco was a sweet if somewhat forced moment.

Speaking of forced: Hathaway was overburdened in her responsibilities as co-host, having to be doubly cheerful and over-the-top rah rah to compensate for phone-it-in Franco. He was so disengaged that he seemed stoned out of his mind or overmedicated for the Big Night. As the Washington Post noted:

She spent the evening trying hard to really sell it (with iffy results) and then, late in the night, it was her job to tell him what a good job he was doing, and he's all, like, 'lax, bro.

Viewers, it was written this way. Young women of America, take note: It's going to be like this the rest of your lives. (And if you make it to the red carpet, the likes of Giuliana Rancic and Kelly Osbourne will refer to you as "girls" instead of women in the still deliciously awful E! pre-show.

The only women who got the respect they deserved were Halle Berry and Lena Horne. At the end of the montage of Hollywood notables who passed away during 2010, Berry appeared onstage with a brief but moving tribute to Lena Horne, the first black woman in Hollywood to sign a long-term contract with a major studio that acknowledged she'd never have to play a maid.

It was one shining moment in a night that didn't treat women -- aside from moms -- all that well.

One other notable observation has to do with the trophy presenters -- those anonymous figures who hold the Oscars and then hand them off to the celebrity presenters who announce the awards. This year they seemed to have as many (if not more) men than women in their ranks, ending a decades-long tendency of the Academy to favor the use of "trophy girls" during the awards ceremony. The one thing that would have made it even better -- having a female announcer as they've done in the past.